SSDs do make sense. For reasons you don't want to know, I suffered two days on a laptop with a conventional spinning-platter hard drive. It was S-L-O-W. Now I'm back to an SSD -- solid state hard drive -- I'm live, productive again. In short, replace your drive with an SSD. This 128 gig one from Amazon should be big enough for most of us. $358. A very sound investment in sanity.

Thrifty was half-price. We rented a Thrifty car from LAX for the weekend. It was less than half the price of Hertz. The car -- a Dodge Charger -- was pretty awful. That was not Thrifty's fault. They said "choose whichever you want." I wanted to try a Dodge. That was a mistake. It was a miracle I didn't hit anything -- given the Charger's limited visibility and my own lousy driving (at least according to my family).

Free Internet service. If you're on an cross-country American Airlines, you may have GoGo Inflight WiFi Internet. The service is truly fantastic. Works your entire flight. For free service (until December 31, Turn your laptop on. Load your browser. Go to "buy". Sign up. Then enter the code 1939admiral70aa under "promotions." It really works. Your service will be free. Trust me.

Latest post office trick. The Post Office randomly returns envelopes that it says don't have enough postage. Key: for critical mail: Put more postage on than is necessary.

This won't make you rich. But it may preserve your net worth. Toward the end of last week, Richard Russell of Dow Theory Letters wrote:

In the face of the above, what are you and I to do? How do we defend ourselves against government ignorance and stupidity? I've given this matter a lot of thought, and my conclusion is that at this juncture there is no single "correct" answer. My own answer is to diversify. Keep a third of your money in gold or gold ETFs, keep another third in cash or a currency, preferably not US dollars, and keep a final third in a paid-off home. The key to the future may lie in a single word -- intrinsic. Do you own items of intrinsic value? Do you own items that cannot go bankrupt? Along those lines I'm talking about anything that is tangible and that has no debt against it. This may include real estate, land, quality gems with certificates, gold, silver, platinum and your own business.

The geography of jobs. Where were the jobs lost? Where were they gained? Slide the cursor along by year. Suddenly, the chart pops with with red and green dots. Green is for gain. Red is for jobs lost. Slide the cursor to 2009. The map fills with huge red dots. It's a visual reminder of what we're going through. Click here.

With video, a traveler fights back. United broke his guitar and lost his luggage. This wonderful story is here. And the video is here. Totally wonderful.

Gaza is a basket case. Among the saddest places in the world is Gaza, that little strip of land between Israel and Egypt. About 1.5 million people live there.

According to the U.N., about seventy per cent of Gazans live on less than a dollar a day, and seventy-five per cent rely on international food assistance. In 1994, Shaban said, one wage earner supported six people in Gaza; the dependency rate is now one earner for every eighteen people. Unemployment is practically universal, except for people working for international organizations, or trading in the black market. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, ninety-six per cent of Gaza’s industrial sector collapsed after Operation Cast Lead (the recent Israeli invasion).

The New Yorker did a long,engrossing piece this week. Click here.

Late night humor:
+ "It's interesting what former presidents do when they leave office. Bush is now working as a motivational speaker. And if you want to be motivated, who better to turn to than the guy who invaded the wrong country and started a depression." -David Letterman

+ "Bush will be a great motivational speaker. Look how many people he motivated to vote Democrat. So there you go!" --David Letterman

+ "President Obama has made a stunning announcement. President Obama has approved a new plan to pay members of the Taliban to switch sides and support the United States. Yeah, apparently he's promised them 72 virgins and full dental coverage." --Conan O'Brien

+ "In a new interview, President Obama admitted that he has had 'bumps in his marriage.' Yeah. After hearing this, Bill Clinton said, 'Bumps? I would kill for bumps!'" --Conan O'Brien

+ "Some bad news for Sarah Palin. I don't know if you heard this, according to a recent survey when asked, 7 out of 10 people said Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president. 7 out of 10. Yeah. Even worse, the question was, 'Are you happy with your long-distance service?'" --Conan O'Brien

+ "ESPN commentator Steve Phillips has been fired for having an affair with a young woman that he worked with. He has checked himself into a rehab facility for sex addiction. Well, it's pretty serious, too. I understand he's in the John Edwards wing." --Jay Leno

This column is about my personal search for the perfect investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have to be registered with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter and an investor. I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available for three reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second, the column is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the Perfect Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their ideas, concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email address is . You can't click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects me from software scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no role in choosing the Google ads on this site. Thus I cannot endorse any, though some look interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please note I'm not suggesting you do. Read more about Google AdSense, click here and here.